lydiature_'s reviews
295 reviews

boring as hell. i don’t care about any of the characters. now i know why i kept dnfing this in high school.

wow wow wow. it took me a hot minute to get my thoughts in order. as soon as i finished the book, i just sat on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. even as i’m writing this review, i’m having trouble putting this into words.

i am absolutely FLOORED by this book. bennett tackled such heavy themes (abortion, church hypocrisy, death of a parent) with such great detail and skill that it just wrecked me. the writing was beautiful (as you can see from all of my highlights) but not distracting. it was concise but packed with raw emotion. i felt sad the entire time—not necessarily because of nadia’s mom’s suicide or the abortion. but because of the melancholic tone that bennett chose to write in. the tone was not only melancholic, but it was also full of *yearning for peace.* nadia was just a girl full of sadness and just wanted inner peace. she was lost.

this is a story where well-meaning hurt people hurt people. no one is evil or selfish. no one has bad character. they’re good people but loss and pain have jaded them. and out of this jadedness, they retaliate and hurt people in order to find some kind of peace. we see this with nadia, luke, and aubrey. we see this with nadia’s father. we even see this in “the mothers” (the church ladies). out of hurt, people hurt others. sometimes there are devastating consequences.

this is a painful book, and extremely realistic. this isn’t one of those books that end well for everyone, where people get closure. but such is life. in life, we hurt others and we ourselves are hurt. sometimes we get closure, but most of the time we don’t. we have to do our best to be good people regardless.

i can’t praise this book enough. i feel absolutely devastated. this is definitely a top book FOR SURE.

read this if you liked “normal people” by sally rooney and “sula” by toni morrison.

i’m going to level with y’all!! the first part went over my head completely but i was hoping that the second part would make more sense with the introduction of nadja. news alert- i was even more confused. normally with classics, i just jump right into them and i’m good. but this one made me wish that i had read this in an english class or something. having a teacher there to help me understand the main themes and points would’ve been great. also being able to discuss this (to fill in gaps) with other students would have been helpful. 

because reading this on my own wasn’t a great experience. i can’t say that i hated it or loved it, or even felt ok about it. i can’t say really anything about it because i didn’t fully understand it. i know that it’s one of the best surrealist books out there. but i don’t know what that means. 

but you know what? i got out of my comfort zone (thanks to patti smith and elif batuman), and i’m proud of myself. who knows? maybe one day someone will post an in depth analysis of this on youtube, and i’m willing to give it another shot.

if you’re interested, i say give it a shot and then maybe we can talk about it! i just don’t recommend buying a physical copy at full price. try to find a copy at your library, or buy it used.

writing is bland and irritating- i can’t stress that enough. all the characters are one dimensional and static. the dialogue is so weird- very fantastical and off. i have no desire to read any of her books. i’m so mad that i wasted $2 on this. i could’ve bought something else 

i think i just have to come to terms with me not liking poetry. because no matter who it is or the subject, i just can’t get into it. out of the hundred or so poems that i have read, i only liked 2 of them: “daddy” by sylvia plath and “gasoline” by margaret atwood. i’ve tried all kinds of styles, poems from different eras and cultures and i just don’t like them. 

this collection by baldwin was lackluster. the content was okay—he mostly talked about race and sexuality. which is obviously fine but the writing wasn’t very good. i was expecting more from this collection. all of his poems were like the instagram quote style thing that is apparently plaguing social media—like rupi kaur and warsan shire. they’re basically “impactful” sentences split up into random breaks. i understand that art is subject but a poem is not a quote. punctuation, break lines, stanzas, and word choices matter. but looking at each of his poems (and the instagram quote poetry style) lacks reason. he could’ve picked any word, any punctuation, any line break. 

i know that some people like that style but i don’t—it doesn’t matter who it is. i just feel like these writers hide their incompetence in the subject matter of “sensational” topics like sexuality, race, gender, and immigration. the concepts are good don’t get me wrong, but that’s a very lazy way of writing. quotes are not poems. it just feels very manipulative to me.

i still love baldwin but i personally will be avoiding his poems from now on. the style he uses to approach his fiction/essays is completely different from his poetry. it’s not very consistent. i honestly didn’t even recognize him in this work.

oh my god this woman!!! ahhh what am i supposed to do?!! i need to get through my physical tbr but now i’m obsessed with patti and i want to read everything she’s written now 😭 HELP 😭 

but real talk. this book/memoir thing is so good. like “just kids”, it’s well-written. the writing is fantastic—it’s poetic without being pretentious and unclear. it’s balanced perfectly. reading this felt like i was holding hands with a grandparent as we were meandering through an abandoned park. the birds chirping with joy, the sky full of sunshine, our hearts beating with life. i can’t stress how much i enjoyed this.

it’s definitely different from what i normally read. it’s part memoir, part short story, part essay. if you’re one of those people who need a traditional story, skip this. you probably won’t like it. but if you don’t mind a little meandering, this is for you. it’s beautifully written and it feels like i’m in the mind of a deep artist who holds true respect for her work. her enthusiasm for art, poetry, and music is so apparent and inspirational and CONTAGIOUS. ever since i finished “just kids” last night, i’ve been listening to her music. and keep in mind, i’m not a big rock/folky type of gal. she’s my favorite writer now and i’m so grateful that i discovered her this year. my life has been changed.

ratings for the 4 stories/sections:

man, i’m just completely blown away. to think that i dnfd it back in february. i had listened to the audiobook and for whatever reason, that was not the right method/time for me. i’m so grateful that i found the physical copy at a book fair for $5–otherwise i’m 

 sure i would’ve never read it. this is one book i would’ve regretted having not read. 

normally with memoirs i get annoyed when the author writes about a bunch of people i don’t know. but although smith mentions people in the art/music scenes i wasn’t familiar with, i wasn’t annoyed at all. her deep love and respect for these people was apparent. and that made me excited to continue reading.

i normally don’t give memoirs 5 ⭐️ but i had to make an exception for this. there is nothing about this that i disliked or noticed flaws. i haven’t read a book that inspires me to want to research the writer, besides james baldwin, toni morrison and joan didion. normally i just read a book, write a review, and move on with my life. but now i’m adding smith to my list and will be trying to find a documentary about her. i want to listen to her music—not because i’m a fan of rock and roll, but because i want to get to know her and her thought process. i’m looking forward to reading her books.

the writing was so beautiful and raw. poetic without being pretentious and overly done. smith’s writing was precise and electric. it fully captivated me in every sense—heart, mind, and soul. i felt the passion that smith felt toward art, writing, and music. i felt the passion and tenderness between her and robert. i felt like i was a personal witness to their evolving relationship and a witness to smith’s growth as a person and artist. when i noticed the increasing distance between smith and robert, i quite literally felt a sense of loss. and when robert got diagnosed with AIDS and later passed away, i was devastated. i cried—not because of empathy, but because i felt like i knew him. i felt like a lost a close friend, and i had to watch another friend (smith) grieve.

this book made me realize that there is a difference between an author and a writer. an author merely creates a story. a writer creates life with a specific style. their story can only be told by THEM—it’s unique to THEIR skills. like robert said, only smith could have written this story. no other person could’ve demonstrated the intimate relationship between him and smith like this. no other person could’ve shown someone’s rise to fame like this. 

i’m so excited to read more on smith. she unlocked at interest in me to look into art and poetry and rock and roll. 

i highly recommend this. 

read it back in 2022 and gave it 4 ⭐️. i really liked how different this was compared to what she wrote in previous years. very brave of her to do. i liked the nastiness of the writing style l; moshfegh quite literally did not hold anything back.

2nd time reading this (2023) it low key lost its charm. while i loved the absurd & dark story i wasn’t a fan of the execution. the length (although short) does not justify the actual story line objectively speaking. the pace was very dragged out and tedious at times. in terms of the major themes (complex child-parent relationships and abuse of power), some of the character POVs were unnecessary. we did not gain anything by having the POVS of ina and grigor, for example. and while i liked how everyone was awful and disgusting, moshfegh went overboard with some of the descriptions in my opinion. again, we did not gain anything by having graphic descriptions of agata’s rapes. that’s just one example.

all in all, good story , okay execution. i liked it and i do recommend it. but i can see why some people don’t like it.

at first, i was really liking this (as far as the writing style). but then it got redundant. normally i love didion’s detached style but for me personally, it just doesn’t work when the subject matter involves grief. that was my experience with her “blue nights”, which i read a few months ago. i have read 2 of her other nonfiction books (“let me tell you what i mean” and “south and west”), and really enjoyed those. but the detachment in those essay collections felt better than the version in her 2 books about grieving the death of her husband and daughter. both “blue nights” and “the year of magical thinking” felt very disconnected, impersonal, and tedious. 

that being said, i still think that “the year of magical thinking” is a worthy read. i can see why so many people love it. it just didn’t captivate me in terms of the writing style/approach.